Catherine Chan and Jason Statham are pursued by the same Russian mobsters.

‘Safe,” the new actioner starring the foot-flying force known as Jason Statham, can’t be called a distinguished film, unless you consider “12-year-old Chinese math genius” an inspired plot point. On the other hand, taken on its own genre-adhering terms, it’s quite enjoyable. There are zero surprises, but it looks good, moves well through a trim running time and wields its clichés with defiant aplomb.

The genius is Mei (Catherine Chan), who’s been abducted to New York, where the Chinese mob uses her to memorize a vital number because computers, they explain breezily, get hacked. The number in Mei’s brain is also coveted by Russian baddies of a type so prevalent in scripts nowadays, they should start a cross-movie bowling league.

Meanwhile, Luke (Statham) is doing cage-match fighting; we know it’s low-end because it’s at the Meadowlands. One night Luke’s supposed to hit the canvas, but nobody bothers to tell him, and instead he puts his opponent in a coma with one punch. As revenge, the same Russian mobsters who are menacing Mei murder Luke’s pregnant wife, and threaten to kill anyone with whom he ever tries to connect.

This setup takes 40 minutes of shifting flashbacks and locales, until poor Luke has tumbled so far down the social ladder it seems Statham secretly wanted to remake “Leaving Las Vegas.”

Inevitably, he encounters Mei on the run from her captors, and steps in. “Steps in,” of course, being a euphemism for “beats the ever-loving mess out of people,” in this case on a subway car where Luke finds creative uses for the poles.

When Luke finally gets his chin off his chest and starts whaling away, it’s such a tonic that it doesn’t much matter that the plot immediately becomes gibberish. Director Boaz Yakin has a decent respect for New York’s geography and what it looks like in real life, as well as an eye for its pockets of lingering grit.

In this movie’s version of reality, one of Statham’s elbows can do more than a fully loaded semiautomatic, but Yakin keeps his action sequences well-grounded in time and space.

Statham, heaven knows, can’t muster a large emotional range. But the actor has a good, raspy voice that’s perfect for his laconic tough-guy quips. Plus he can kick higher than a Rockette, and looks menacing just scrolling through the contacts list on a smartphone.

Statham knows exactly what he’s doing, as do the filmmakers, even as “Safe” racks up a higher body count in its second half than the real New York does in a year.